Critical Decision
by Lucillia
Summary: What if Jiraiya's choice that made the difference between sending his student down a path that led to peace or one that led to destruction was something that was seemingly small and inconsequential?


Jiraiya sat idly watching his most recent student practice a new jutsu with a single-minded determination he had seen in few shinobi. As he watched the blond child in the day-glo orange and electric blue tracksuit fail for what seemed to be the thousandth time his mind wandered to the past and a particular prophesy.

One of his students would either bring about a great and lasting peace or terrible destruction and devastation unlike any that had come before. It would be his decision that would choose the path that his student traveled down. One day he would have to make a critical choice and it would lead to one of his students either saving or destroying the world. The thing that worried him most was that he would never know which student it would be or what the choice was until it was far too late. By then, the would could be destroyed and it would have been his fault.

Unbeknown to Jiraiya, he had made the critical decision long ago.

* * *

It had been almost three years since he'd last been to Konoha. Three years since he provided what little aid he could in the aftermath of the Nine-Tailed Fox's attack. The place was a reminder of everything he had lost, and in trying to forget he'd buried himself in managing the spy network he had created and writing a follow up to his recent bestseller. Today, he'd had nothing to do and his mind had started wandering to the past rather than focusing on the fight scene between Hiro and Midoriko after the latter had come home from a dangerous mission to Iwa to find her boyfreind being seduced by the deadly and drop-dead gorgeous Kaede. He was on his way to get so drunk he didn't know which way was up to rectify the situation when he'd nearly tripped over the little girl.

The small blonde child in ragged but clean clothes stared up at him with impossibly wide blue eyes. An instant later, the girl started crying. Looking down he found the reason for her tears. In avoiding the child he had trampled the small rolling toy she had been chasing, and had broken it.

While he could have simply apologized, handed the child off to whatever parent she'd escaped from, apologized again and headed off to the bar, he felt honor bound to provide restitution for the property he had destroyed. That, and he'd always been a sucker when it came to crying children because he was willing to do almost anything to get them to stop. He'd once bought Konan nearly half the contents of a candy store to get her to shut up.

As he followed the small girl about the nearby toy store, he couldn't help but think that Minato's son Naruto would be about that age. He generally tried not to think about Naruto and the duty he'd abandoned in favor of keeping tabs on his former teammate and didn't know why he was thinking about him now. It was probably the little girl's blonde hair and impossibly wide blue eyes that had reminded him.

When the girl stopped to examine some stuffed animals, his eyes fell on a brown bear. It looked a great deal like the stuffed bear that Minato had added to the small nursery he had created for his child a week before the damned fox had come to disrupt the Fire Festival. He didn't know where the sudden urge to buy the bear for Minato's son had come from. It probably was because he remembered how Minato's home had been destroyed in the Fox's rampage and that Naruto had never received any of the things his parents had gotten for him because they had been destroyed as well. As he looked at the bear, he debated whether or not to follow that strange urge. On the one hand he had never sent anything to Naruto or really done anything to fulfill his godfatherly duties. On the other, if he was seen sending toys to Konoha questions would be asked and they might lead back to Naruto who would then be placed in danger for his association to him.

Finally coming to a decision, he grabbed the bear from the shelf. The boy's third birthday was coming up, and he deserved at least one present from him. The inevitable questions about the gift's recipient could easily be forestalled if he asked the clerk to gift wrap the thing in something girly. Any outside observers would think he was trying to woo yet another woman who was going to promptly reject him.

After he finished making his purchases, the girl's mother came inside looking frantic. Upon seeing the look on the woman's face when she snatched her daughter away he decided to head the coming confrontation and what it could do to his reputation off at the pass.

"Not interested in kids lady. I stepped on the brat's toy and figured I owed her another one since I broke it." he said as he picked up the gift wrapped bear "Now if you don't mind, I'll be going."

The woman clearly didn't believe him.

"Then what's that for?" she said, as she gestured to Naruto's present. "Gonna lure another little girl since I caught you with mine."

"The girl I'm trying to get with this is not so little. I happen to like my girls rather well developed and about eighteen years or so older than your brat." Jiraiya said recalling the perfect reason for why it wouldn't be so suspicious for his package to show up at the Hokage's office even if it gets "accidentally misdelivered", the arguments she sparked between Hiruzen-Sensei and his wife and leering slightly before he turned and left.

* * *

The Hokage looked down at the bright pink package covered in hearts that one of Jiraiya's toads had delivered. Inside was a stuffed bear for Naruto. Three years without a peep from him about the boy, and all of the sudden he's sending birthday presents. Jiraiya had expected him to give the gift to the boy for him. People would raise a fuss if the Hokage was seen giving gifts to the "Fox Child", a fuss that he didn't need if he wanted to keep Naruto out of Danzo's slimy paws. He was already toeing the line with his visits to the orphanage to check up on the boy.

He would just have to find someone else to give Jiraiya's gift to Naruto. Now that he thought about it, he knew just the person. It was a good thing he'd returned from a solo A rank that morning otherwise he probably wouldn't see him for another month.

* * *

The seventeen year-old ANBU operative wandered silently through the orphanage in the wee hours of the morning checking each bed for his target. None of the sleeping occupants were the one he sought. He was about to go and report his failure to the Hokage when he heard the small noise coming from what looked to be either a supply closet or a storage room. Opening the door, he was shocked and angered to find his sensei's son curled up on the floor of what proved to be a small closet full of janitorial supplies.

His first impulse on finding the boy had been to kill the bastards that had treated a child this way. He swallowed the impulse knowing it would get him arrested and executed and most likely not help improve the child's life since the villagers would be more likely to blame the boy for any such actions taken on his behalf.

His second impulse was to take the boy and run. He forced himself to swallow that impulse as well. He couldn't steal the child away in the night because that would be considered kidnapping, even if said child was regarded as a demon and an unwanted burden by most of Konoha's populace. Kidnapping was a capital offense in Fire Country. If he fled with the boy, he would be declared a missing nin and the child would be at risk every second of every day until he was captured or killed. Legal options weren't open to him either, since nobody would allow a seventeen year old ANBU to adopt a child under any circumstances.

At the very least the shivering child deserved a warm place to sleep, and he didn't know how to provide it. He knew he couldn't put the child on one of the beds since he would most likely end up back in the closet, probably after a beating, when he was discovered during the next bed check. There had to be something he could do for his sensei's son though.

When he thought about it later, he couldn't recall where the idea that was so stupid that it was brilliant had come from. He turned around and left, returning a half hour later carrying what looked to be a large basket. After pulling the half awake boy out of the closet, he moved some items and set the basket down. After once again brushing off the cushion in the basket (he'd gotten the worst of the dog hair off at home) he set the boy down on top of it, casting a jutsu to make the child go back to sleep. After covering the boy with a small and rather ugly throw blanket that the insufferable Gai had given him as a gift and he never managed to get rid of, he tucked the bear that he'd been sent to deliver under the boy's arm.

Pakkun was going to be cross with him for giving away his favorite bed, but he could deal with that later.

The child looked alot more comfortable than he had on the floor and was sleeping more soundly, but that could also have been due to the jutsu. It would have to do for now, but he would make sure his sensei's son's situation improved soon. If it didn't, he would just have to find a way to make sure that the child's "kidnapping" was never traced back to him.

* * *

Naruto was amazed to discover that he was warm when he woke up. He was laying on something soft, there was something soft and warm covering him, and there was something soft and fuzzy in his arms. Someone had given him a blanket, a pillow big enough to sleep on, and something that in the dim light coming from the door frame and under the door looked vaguely like the stuffed bear that Hikaru carried everywhere.

* * *

Upon finding Naruto sitting on a dog bed in the morning when she came to get him up, the matron had laughed. It was only after she had finished thanking the person whose wit had provided her with the most amusement she had had in a good long while that she noticed the bear. She swiftly snatched it away to give to a more deserving child. The demon that had killed the parents of many of the children she cared for didn't deserve anything nice.

She let him keep the dog bed though, moving it so it was next to the small fireplace in her quarters in a parody of a domestic scene. It amused her every time she saw the demon curled up on it like a tame pet.

* * *

The Hokage read through the report he'd received once again. What Kakashi had revealed was disturbing. No child deserved to be treated this way, much less the son of the man who had sacrificed himself to save the village.

He had gone to check up on the boy a few times when he had a bit of time to spare. Naruto had seemed okay, if a little on the thin side. He and his clothes had been clean each time he'd seen him and his hair had been neatly brushed. The boy had had a healthy flush to his cheeks every time he had seen him that he now suspected was either the result of pinching or a careful application of rouge.

It seemed that someone in his office had been warning the orphanage of when he would arrive and had given them time to prepare.

He would have removed the child from the orphanage immediately if he could, but there was nobody who would be willing to take him that didn't want to use him for their own ends, and in the long run that would be far worse than what he was going through now. For now Naruto was too small to live on his own, but in a few years he wouldn't be.

* * *

Over the years when the hateful glares became a little too much, when Naruto considered just giving up, he remembered that there was someone out there who cared for him, someone who had given him a bed, a bear, food when he thought he would have to go hungry, a new blanket when his old one had mysteriously vanished, many other small things that were too numerous to count, and he decided to continue forward and hope that things would get better soon.

Eventually, he met an Academy instructor named Umino Iruka who became like an older brother and a father all rolled into one to him.

* * *

In another world, Jiraiya stayed his hand in the toy shop out of concern for Naruto's safety and the small brown bear stayed on its shelf.

Six months later, Hatake Kakashi was killed on one of the numerous missions he took to fill the empty hours so he didn't have time to stop and think about the past.

Four years and some months later, the Instructor's Assistant and soon to be Academy Instructor Umino Iruka met a seven year-old boy named Uzumaki Naruto who had long since given up all hope of anybody caring for or about him. He tried to get to the child behind those frighteningly dead eyes, but eventually gave up. Admittedly, he hadn't really tried as hard as he could. The child was the container of the Nine Tailed Fox after all, and there were other kids to focus on, kids who actually responded to the efforts he made on their behalf.

More than nine years later, Jiraiya found an empty shell where his godson should be. He took the "child" on as a student more out of obligation than anything. He failed to reach the boy as Iruka had five years before.

Fifteen years later, Jiraiya felt the shock wave from an explosion that he later learned had left a crater more than a hundred miles wide and almost half a million people dead and wondered where it had been that he had gone wrong.


End file.
